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<h2 class="PageTitle">Nagios Plugins</h2>
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<strong><u>What Are Plugins?</u></strong>
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Plugins are compiled executables or scripts (Perl, shell, etc.) that can be run from a command line to check the status or a host or service.  Nagios uses the results from plugins to determine the current status or hosts and services on your network.  No, you can't get away without using plugins - Nagios is useless without them.
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<strong><u>Obtaining Plugins</u></strong>
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Plugin development for Nagios is being done at SourceForge.  The Nagios plugin development project page (where the latest version of by plugins can always be found) is located at <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagiosplug/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagiosplug/</a>.
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<strong><u>How Do I Use Plugin <i>X</i>?</u></strong>
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Documentation on how to use individual plugins is <i>not</i> supplied with the core Nagios distribution.  You should refer to the latest plugin distribution for information on using plugins.  Karl DeBisschop, lead plugin developer/maintainer points out the following:
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All plugins that comply with minimal development guideline for this project include internal documentation.  The documentation can be read executing plugin with the '-h' option ('--help' if long options are enabled).  If the '-h' option does not work, that is a bug.
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For example, if you want to know how the check_http plugin works or what options it accepts, you should try executing one of the following commands:
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./check_http --help
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or
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./check_http -h
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<strong><u>Command Definition Examples For Services</u></strong>
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It is important to note that command definitions found in sample config files in the core Nagios distribution are probably <i>not</i> accurate as to command line parameters, etc when it comes to the plugins.  They are simply provided as examples of how to define commands.
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<strong><u>Creating Custom Plugins</u></strong>
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Creating your own plugins to perform custom host or service checks is easy.  You can find information on how to write plugins at <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagiosplug/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagiosplug/</a>.  The developer guidelines can be found at <a href="http://nagiosplug.sourceforge.net/developer-guidelines.html">http://nagiosplug.sourceforge.net/developer-guidelines.html</a>.
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